‘House of the Dragon’ Production Designers Worked With Authorities to Make Spain Look Less Clean Without Changing Stonework
Todd Longwell From the majestic-but-aged environs inhabited by the British royals Netflix’s in “The Crown” and the decadent sun-drenched luxury of the San Domenico Palace resort in Taormina, Sicily, in HBO’s “The White Lotus” to the foreboding Ontario wilderness where a girls’ soccer team is stranded in Showtime’s “Yellowjackets,” the locations used in this year’s Emmy-nominated dramas loom so large they can be viewed as characters unto themselves that interact with the performers and help shape the narrative. It’s especially true of the role Albuquerque, N.M., plays in AMC’s “Better Call Saul.” There’s no telling if the series would even exist if creator Vince Gilligan had gotten his way back in the mid-2000s and the studio suits at Sony agreed to let him use Riverside, Calif., as the setting for its predecessor “Breaking Bad” (2008-2013), which established the “Saul” characters and their dramatic universe.